Jason Antman’s Blog

I know this blog has been less-than-active lately. Life has been pretty busy, between a massive network upgrade at the ambulance corps that I volunteer with, the impending doom of a new semester at work, scheduling courses, and a few personal projects. I do, however, have a long list of things to post, including some notes on my upgrade to Nagios 3, my recent experience with the PC Engines ALIX board, some changes to tuxOstat, and my plans to upgrade to Optimum Business cable with 5 static IPs – finally a real home for JasonAntman.com.

CitiCards Problems - I had a somewhat unnerving experience this morning. Having just gotten a Citibank credit card, and made my first few purchases on it, I browsed to CitiCards.com to check my account summary. I happened to be using a just-purchased IBM T41 laptop, running OpenSuSE 11.0 and FireFox3, so when I saw the page display and then go completely blank, I suspected a problem with my Flash plugin. Little did I know, but I tried the same page on 3 other Linux/Firefox machines, with the same result. I put in a call to the tech support line, and was gruffly informed by the representative that Firefox was not supported, they were unable to support it, and, to paraphrase, I should get another browser or f*** off. She was very well-aware of the issue, and stated that Citi would not fix it. At this point, I stated that I thought I would cancel my card, and she told me to have a nice day and hung up.

I decided to go to step 2 of the Generic Problem Solving Method, and found hundreds of references to a problem with CitiCards.com on Linux. I read through a lot of conspiracy theory, but decided to test one of the theories (and fixes). Sure enough, when I right-clicked on the blank white screen, I got a Flash context menu. Clicking “Play” showed the ad, and I was able to click the little “X” in the top right and bypass it, gaining access to the normal main page. Never to be one to ignore a conspiracy (or anti-Linux) theory, I pulled up the same page on a Mac. Sure enough, that particular ad (set not to play and with an opaque full-screen background) didn’t show up. Hmm… maybe there’s something to the theory put forth by the guy who said CitiBank is blocking Linux users.

I decided to call back, and this time spoke with Susan at CitiCards tech support. She was very understanding, and apologized for both the inconvenience and the previous representative’s attitude. She said that she was aware of some issues with Firefox and Linux, but stated that they are only unsupported so far as Tech Support won’t walk a customer using Linux or FireFox through any issue resolution, but that both the browser and architecture should, theoretically, work. She didn’t know anything about a policy against Linux, or intentional blocking/sabotage. She did say, however, that they are “working on it”. I did inform her that the problem could probably be resolved by simply editing the Flash ad to be properly transparent, or suppressing it for Linux architectures, though I doubt that the information will make its’ way up the food chain. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find a contact email for anything site-related on CitiCards.com.

If this is really a case of intentional blocking, it would be quite infuriating – I filled out the application for the card on FireFox3/Linux… but then they block account access?

Hopefully more of an update tonight…

Miscellaneous Geek Stuff citibank, citicards, firefox, flash, linux

As you may have noticed, some Firefox 3 buttons have popped up not only here on my blog, but also on my wiki. While adding the buttons to Blogger was a simple addition to the template, getting them in the sidebar of MediaWiki wasn’t exactly as easy (yeah, I’m considering the arduous project of moving my whole 102+ page wiki to Drupal or another good F/OSS CMS).

After some serious grepping through the source, and adding HTML comments to see where they appeared, I finally found a solution to add the button to the MediaWiki sidebar – though I’d really like it to appear below the search box (I guess that’s something for my to-do list). I’m using the MonoBook skin (though somewhat modified). I’m using “MonoBook nouveau”, and it should be the version that shipped with MW 1.10.1. In this version, I added the code around line 166. Specifically, this was added before the <div id="p-search" class="portlet"> line, and after the end of the foreach ($this->data['sidebar'] as $bar => $cont) loop. This threw the button in a box directly above the search box, and below all of my sidebar links.

The code looked something like:

      <?php } ?>      <!-- firefox link added to MonoBook.php by jantman 2008-06-18 -->      <div class='portlet' id='p-logos'>          <h5>Cool Stuff</h5>          <div class='pBody'>              <ul>                  <li><a href="http://www.spreadfirefox.com/node&id=238326&t=305" target="_blank"><img border="0" alt="Firefox 3" title="Firefox 3" src="http://sfx-images.mozilla.org/affiliates/Buttons/firefox3/110x32_best-yet.png"/></a></li>              </ul>           </div>      </div>      <!-- end firefox link -->      <div id="p-search" class="portlet">

In other news, I’m taking a Data Driven Websites class this summer (PHP/MySQL, but for some reason they switched to a Windows server… endless problems, and I can’t even edit with Nano on the server, let alone emacs). Our first project was to build a blog engine, which I’m working on right now. Anyway, it got me thinking… the one thing that Blogger is missing is the ability to post to a given category, and allow users to view or subscribe to a specific category (or everything). So I think I may look into writing something like that myself, if I can’t find a good alternative that’s already done and is F/OSS. Regardless, I’ll probably be keeping the Blogger template as well as (ugh) moving over all of my current posts, which Blogger chose to store in raw HTML. So there’s going to be a lot of parsing on my future…

PS – When I get a new blog engine, I’m also going to go for a slightly modified template that uses relative widths and placement – so that code, like the snippet here, fits the screen correctly.

Projects blog, firefox, mediawiki, PHP

Well, Firefox 3 is here. And it’s wonderful. I’ve had it running all day, and absolutely love it. I just got FFX 3 running on my laptop (my primary workstation). The memory management does appear to be better – nowhere near as much of a strain on the laptop (a mere 1GB RAM), and better page load time. I’m not sure how I feel about the UI changes, but those can be dealt with…

For everyone who downloaded Firefox 3 today – good job! Over 8 Million downloads in 24 hours, and inching up to 580 Million total downloads of Firefox!!!

Want to hear a figure even more amazing, from Mozilla’s Blog of Metrics? It’s only been a little over twenty four hours since the launch, and “According the live tracking from Net Applications, Fx3 has been hovering around 4% worldwide market share.”

Miscellaneous Geek Stuff firefox

Some links for today:

Microsoft’s new promised on interoperability, open standards. etc. – somewhat ironic given the Office Open XML debacle on “standards”. And Red Hat’s worries about it. (Ars Technica)

Groklaw’s lengthy analysis of the promises.

Pakistan removed from the Internet, causes global YouTube outage.

A Guardian article on the WikiLeaks debacle – perhaps the biggest affront to the First Amendment this year.

An InformationWeek article about some guys from BlackHat D.C. who said that they will be able to crack GSM encryption in under 30 minutes with $1,000 of technology or 30 seconds with $100,000 (FPGAs – Maybe a cluster of PS3’s?)

A Princeton Unviersity blog about cold boots possibly able to crack the Windows BitLocker system.

Yay! Firefox has hit its’ 500 Millionth download!!! And there was much rejoicing…

An ArsTechnica article on Internet Explorer, what should be done to fix it, and how there can still be a non-standards-compliant browser.

Jeremy’s Blog – the mind behind LinuxQuestions.org – provides a recap of the 2007 LQ Members’ Choice awards. Some interesting winners were VirtualBox for virtualization package, Debain for server distro, Knoppix for Live Distro, Eclipse for IDE/Web Development Environment, Python for language of the year, and – much to my chagrin – vi/vim for editor.

A LinuxJournal article on What’s Next for Open Source and Public Meida.

LinuxInsider – EU taking Microsoft’s promises with a grain of salt, noting that MS has made “at least four similar statements” in the past.

Chris Siebenmann – Where the risk is with virtualization (and iSCSI) and Wireless, machine rooms, and the Asus eeePC.

IBM DeveloperWorks – OOXML: What’s the big deal? – outlining the technical objections to OOXML as a standard. Linked from a rootprompt.org article mentioning that “OOXML is essentially a complete replication of every chunk of data that a Microsoft Office application might possibly save in a file”.

Slashdot YRO – a guy who got hist stock photos stolen, entered into a long legal battle, and won.

Microsoft’s Windows Vista Capable lawsuit granted class-action status.

A Washington Post article on Hans Reiser’s Geek Defense strategy.

A Slashdot post linking to news that Apple sent a cease-and-decist order to the Hymn Project, which produces software to remove DRM from iTunes songs. Apple had their ISP remove all download links. (I guess the only solution is for us all to buy bandwidth right from a NSP…)

Yahoo’s shareholders are suing it for not gobbling up the Microsoft deal.

Comcast getting sued AGAIN for P2P filtering.

A leaked RIAA training video for prosecutors, going so far as to say that IP piracy can lead to arrests for drugs, weapons, or terrorism. It also includes instructions on how to get a RIAA investigator certified as a court expert.

A New York Times article on – gasp – women using the Internet. Linked from Tom Limoncelli’s blog.

Interesting Links and Resources apple, bitlocker, cellphone, EU, firefox, gsm, microsoft, ooxml, pakistan, riaa, virtualization, wikileaks, windows, youtube

Part 2 of today’s thoughts…

Blacklists, Blocking, Reverse-Validation – Yes, they have some uses. I use Daemon Synchronization in DenyHosts and plug-ins like Pyzor in SpamAssassin. However, I’ve also been the victim of blacklists, and the new Internet order, many times. There’s a conspiracy between ISPs – simply put, big ISPs want everyone else to use big ISPs. I understand the logic behind reverse-validation. However, I have a residential internet connection. I also run Linux. When I got Verizon, I configured Postfix to deliver mail directly. Big mistake. Most big email providers (AOL, MSN, probably Gmail too) will bounce back e-mail that comes from a domain that doesn’t reverse-validate. And since Verizon owns my IP, despite the substantial sums of money they’ve been getting from me, my IP doesn’t reverse-validate to my domain name. To top it off, Verizon blocks the usual SMTP ports on residential connections, so I can’t have people send me e-mail either. Everything needs to be relayed through Verizon. To add to the frustration, Verizon blocks port 80 on my connection, so I’m forced to serve my whole site on an unused (and un-blocked) high-numbered port. And use DynDNS.org to redirect to my dynamic IP. This wouldn’t be so much of an issue if I didn’t know that some large companies have firewalls configured to block HTTP requests *OUT* to any non-default port. As a result, my own father can’t view my web site or blog from work. What ever happened to the little guy?

Network Performance – I know I have old computers and an old switch. But there’s something wrong when network file transfers crawl by at ~3 Mbps. I setup nttcp on two of my machines to measure throughput, and was greeted with numbers in the realm of 93-96 Mbps – what I’d expect on a 100 Mpbs network. However, a file transfer between these two machines barely scratched 8 Mpbs. Maybe GigE is the answer, but I’ll be looking into the theory behind this in the next few days – admittedly, I don’t know much about network performance, but I’m willing to learn…

New Project – I’ve started planning on a new project, openEPCR. My PHP EMS Tools package for EMS and fire agencies seems to be generating a lot of downloads (yet little community interest), and I’m now seriously thinking about the lack of a free, open-source Electronic Patient Care Report package for the pre-hospital care industry. A lot of these organizations are volunteer and operating on limited budgets. Stay tuned… all I’ll say is that what I’ve planned is something that you’d expect from me – open-source, platform-independent, and geared towards limited hardware resources. I’ll probably be looking towards Java as a development platform, though the interest generated in Google Gears may also pay off. Of course, there’s no way I can do such an ambitious project myself, so I’m looking for developers to help out.

Comic – pretty much the only non-serious content in my Google Reader account is XKCD.com. It’s a great comic with wonderful technical and geek humor. Today’s comic was so good that I just had to include it…

Projects bandwidth, blacklist, comic, epcr, firefox, java, openepcr, patient care report, pcr, php ems tools, reverse-validation, XKCD

When browsing through Digg this morning, I came by a story at PCpro UK entitled “Boycott ad-blocking Firefox, urges furious web designer“. This gentleman stated that, Software that blocks all advertisement is an infringement of the rights of website owners and developers.”

While I don’t like giving press to such a story, I found it alarming on many levels.

Firstly, I’ve never heard of rights of website owners and developers. Being a “website owner and developer” myself, I understand that the web is a dynamic medium. Moreover, I think of HTML as what it is – a markup language. It just tells a program (browser) how to display something in a user-friendly style. I test my pages with Lynx, and expect them to conform to HTML/1.1. In other words, I believe that the Internet is an information distribution tool. I expect, I *want*, my content to be viewable by as many people as possible. I try to use simple markup and make use of ALT tags so that as many people as possible will be able to view the content. I want it to make sense on as many platforms as possible. I want people who need accessibility aids to be able to understand it. In short, I want my content to reach as many people as possible.

Not only is this developer trying to do something which is ignorant and a case of being a flat-out bad citizen of the ‘net, but he is trying to fight against the progress which has so painstakingly been made in the field of web standardization. I well remember when, not long ago at all, I was handicapped by my choice of using Firefox. I still come by the odd site which chose to use a component which is tied to Internet Explorer, thereby alienating 35% of web users.

I will admit that I am by no means the typical Internet user. The fact that all of my some dozen or so machines (excepting one which I need to use a legacy SCSI flatbed scanner) run 100% Free/Open Source software. I use Linux. OpenSolaris. BSD. I believe that I have a right to examine and modify the source code of the programs that I use. When choosing a bug tracking system, I spent hours customizing an open-source alternative because I was unwilling to use the closed-source option which seemed to fit best. Therefore, I guess it is easy to understand that I refuse to buy from, or even visit, a web site that doesn’t support Firefox.

This is not a browser war. This is not me simply deciding to flame someone who isn’t a F/OSS zealot. This boils down to a deeper issue that can be seen all around us – including in the recent news surrounding the US FCC’s auction of a portion of the 700MHz spectrum. The issue at hand is the complacency of technology users, and the feeling by technology providers that they can push anything they want on users. The concept that providers are sending data to me, and that I can use that data however I want (within the extent of the law) is getting lost.

When I watch TV, I used to leave the room or pick up a book when a commercial comes on. Now that I have a PVR (specifically, MythTV), I can record the shows I want, and then have commercials flagged for automatic skipping before I watch them. When I decide to watch them, I have no commercials. When I use the web, I select the content that I want. If I don’t want it, I don’t get it.

Moreover, another large issue at hand is the simple nature of digital media. This applies to TV recording, music and movie sharing, software piracy, etc. Digital media is not the same as analog media. An MP3 (or, for that matter, a CD) is not the same as a tape. In product litigation, there is a term known as “perceived use”. If you make a glass coffee table that is exactly at knee height, it is perceived that eventually, someone will try to sit on it. That’s common sense. If it shatters and kills them, it was your responsibility to foresee such an obvious eventuality. It’s only common sense that if something is flat and at normal sitting level, someone will try to sit on it.

Likewise, I would argue that when any content is distributed digitally, you must foresee that it will be copied or altered. It is simply the nature of the medium. If the recording industry didn’t want people ripping music from CDs, they should have kept releasing things on tape. Even more so with DVDs – I’m sure we all remember the push. Five years ago, I was hard pressed to find a DVD in a local rental store. Today, I haven’t seen a VHS tape in years. The industry *pushed* the format on us, and is now complaining when we use it in a brutally obvious way. If I had to liken it to any legal phenomenon, I would pick entrapment. It’s not a far stretch to compare the recording industry’s actions to those of a police officer who leaves a car running, with the keys in the ignition, and a sign on the windshield that says “Take me for a spin around the parking lot” and then arrests someone for auto theft when they leave the lot. If they industry is worried about piracy, it should have been their obligation to look into exactly how easy piracy would be, before they chose a distribution medium.

In closing my rant, I will ask a few simple questions:

1) Why is it that the law, being as biased to corporate interests (and against the individual) as it is, doesn’t recognize the rights of the individual to use what they legally purchased in a way that they see fit? (i.e. if I buy a DVD, I should be able to make a backup copy on my computer – even the *copyright law* states that).

2) How long will it be before someone turns up an internal RIAA memo from ten years ago stating that the industry could increase its’ profits by releasing music on a medium (CD) that is prone to piracy, and then fining the people who exploit that common sense?

3) When they came out with VHS recorders, the industry was up in arms about piracy. So, they got together and added a small amount on the price of every blank tape, intended to reimburse the labels/artists/networks for the copy that it would be used to make. Why can’t they just tack $3 onto every blank DVD and CD, $20 on every blank hard drive, and stop suing college kids?

Ideas and Rants ad blocker, firefox, internet, standards